Really Wrecked S.A.C.
Newsletter number 9: Weymouth '99

Our annual bunfight in Weymouth was our first outing as a club since May, so we were keen, to say the least. This year, we missed the company of Alain Urruty, particularly his drunken snoring and ability to play pool while too pissed to stand.

In his stead we had the almost mythical Paul Myles - a hard-drinking, hard-living Really Wrecked man to the core, who'd more than fill Alain's beer soaked shoes. For the second trip running Paul found himself utterly unable to come up with a decent reason to excuse himself from the fishing, and was therefore forced to come.

Day one: the off, or is that eff off?
But what a trip he had in prospect. We had two days booked with jovial skipper Ken 'psycho' Leicester, aboard Bonwey, a charming boat decommissioned in 1872. So, after a tremendous night's sleep in sumptuous, nay palatial, suites of the Sailor's Return, we awoke, fur-tongued, hungover and, in most cases, late. In fact, by the time our bleary-eyed bunch of sorry-looking bastards trailed on to the quay, Ken had been waiting on his boat for quite a while, so he was not all that pleased with us when we finally deigned to start loading our gear.

It was perhaps this, less than ideal, start which accounted for a most disturbing incident. Ken was just outlining possible plans for the day, asking us what we'd like to do, when in an attempt to be helpful, and in no sense in an "I just can't shut my gob" way, I tried to help out by translating some of Ken's colloquialisms into English. But Ken didn't need help, and gently suggested that I might shut up.

For some reason, the rest of the crew seemed to find this very funny indeed, though nobody was foolish enough to laugh in front of Psycho. We hadn't even left the harbour on the first day, and already I had the trip's Champagne Moment in the bag. How's that for a start?

As we set off, and once people had stopped laughing, we made the rules of the two days. Every record set meant the captor had to buy a round that evening, even if the record was broken again later. You were also awarded your special Really Wrecked T-shirt ("Superb design and excellent value for money" - Steve Newham* ) for your first fish of the day.

On top of that, there was a hugely arcane and incomprehensible series of sweepstakes for the biggest and the first fish, and a series of other things which nobody could actually remember, but which had seemed like a really good idea at about 1am the night before in the pub.

Blonde needs kidneys
First stop was the Kidney Bank, where we were to fish for blonde rays. Ken wasn't that optimistic about our chances, but in his own immortal words "Shut up!", I mean "You've got to give these things a try."

Bait was half mackerel fillet, hooked in the thin end to flap enticingly in the tide. It was mounted on an 8/0 hook to 200lb mono, which was itself attached to a 6-8ft 50lb trace extension, so our baits would have plenty of scope for tangles, er, movement in the tide.

The tide was pretty fierce, and we needed all of 2lb to hold bottom even with braided line, but blonde rays like a lot of flow. Ken promised that if we didn't get blondes, we'd get dogfish, and he wasn't wrong. Within minutes, we'd unhooked and returned several of the bait-robbing nuisances.

Then Chris Grant had a proper bite and struck into a fish that was obviously no doggie. Sadly, it didn't stay attached for long, leaving Chris cursing under his breath.

Shortly afterwards I too hooked into a blonde, which held on all the way to the top, and briefly set the club standard at 12lb 8oz. Not ten minutes later it was beaten when Adam boated a fish of 14lb 10oz, which put up a decent account of itself on 30lb class gear. Two rounds already paid for that evening, and we'd only been fishing for an hour and a half.

Dear Roy Castle...
With the tide dropping away fast, Ken was pretty sure we'd had the best of it until after slack water, and he was keen to move to a patch of rough ground where we'd have the chance of huss, eels and bream.

We arrived just after slack water. Some set about breaming while others, made of altogether more rugged stuff, put down the big hooks for the big fish. Sadly though, being all big and tough proved the less effective of the two strategies, as quite a few bream were caught to about 2½lb, while all the big baits produced was small huss and doggies.

In the end, everyone had a go at breaming and most people caught. There were twelve big bream taken and about the same number of smaller fish returned. The small baits also produced a new record - a fine scad mackerel to Mr. Frost that smashed the old record out of sight by one ounce, giving us a new club best of 15oz. Round two to Adam.

But the records didn't stop there. I finally satisfied a lifelong ambition in besting the prestigious and coveted lesser spotted dogfish record. This has stood at 1lb 8oz for two summers, and I finally broke it with a magnificent specimen which also beat the magical 2lb barrier, redolent with romance and mystery, by a thumping 2oz. Another round to me.

But Tubs wasn't finished. No, he still had a bull huss up his sleeve, so to speak, posting a superb 6lb 12oz beast to propel him, yet again, into the august pages of RWSAC folklore. We finished up with a drift over the Shambles with mackerel strip for turbot and brill, but there wasn't so much as a sniff of a fish. Still, five records, five rounds, not a bad day, all in all, and not a bad night either, though Adam did have to send out for reinforcements for the fiver he'd been hoping would last him the entire trip.

Falling down sleepy
In fact, some members of the crew ducked out of the evening even before all five rounds were bought, which was marvellous in purely fiscal terms, but which some people felt was more than slightly wussy. However, one fisherman stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of his phenomenal abilities to keep going while all about him were throwing up or unconscious. This man more than made up for any lightweights. Step forward Paul Myles, the drinking man's drinker.

Paul's abilities to keep pouring drink down his throat were, quite simply, amazing. As soon as he was back on the quay he started. A glass of white wine was followed in short order by a full pint of shandy, with a chaser of water on the side. During the meal he kept it up, downing sip after sip of Coca-cola. We could only look on in awe.

This continued hour upon hour till, looking at our watches we noticed it was well past nine o'clock in the evening. When we looked up again, Paul had gone. The unstoppable reprobate had had his fill of our nancy-boy antics and had roared off drunkenly into the night. Back to his nice, warm, feathery duvet (tog rating 15) with a steaming cup of hot cocoa, so that he could be sure of at least 12 hours sleep before another tiring day at sea.

On the other hand, there is the school of thought that says that he (and any others who didn't stay up drinking until 4am) simply came to their senses and wanted to be awake for most of the second day's fishing, unlike certain long-haired, bearded anglers, who spent more than half of the next day (and most fishing trips) asleep.

Day two: blue rod bonanza
Next morning we were waiting by the quay in plenty of time, so we could get an early start for the long steam to a patch of rough ground Ken hadn't fished for a while, but which he was keen to try. It held bream for light tackle enthusiasts and tope, rays, eels and huss for the less feeble anglers.

On the way out we struggled for mackerel to supplement our boxes of squid, though Paul Myles did manage to catch two tiny pollack on mackerel feathers from inside the breakwater, and Adam covered himself in still more glory by bagging another record, again by just one ounce. This time it was the mackerel record, with a super 1lb 9oz fish. Lucky old Adam was buying again.

We arrived in time for the last of the ebb, which produced dogfish, pouting, a red gurnard and nothing else. Except that I managed to break the doggie record again, this time with a fish of 2lb 12oz.

Thornback and tope
The tide took a long time to pick up, and we suffered a very frustrating few hours when we had nothing of any note. Even a couple of hours after high tide, we were struggling to trot light leads back in the minimal flow. By this time, Ken was quite keen to head back in, as it was quite clear that the fish weren't really having it.

However, as it was our last day, we decided to pay extra to stay on (very reasonable at £25 an hour), so that we could see what happened when the tide started to flood properly. With the speed of the tide increasing, we began to get more pout, and we felt it was only a matter of time before things started to happen.

It was Phil who had the first proper fish. He was livebaiting with mackerel, and after a very peculiar bite which took a long time to develop, he wound down into a fish with all the fight of a tub of lard, or Adam Frost, as he has become known. However, it was clearly a decent fish, and we were all pleasantly surprised to see the club's first thornback ray on the surface, which the scales revealed to be just eight ounces short of double figures.

After this a pack of small tope moved in. They mostly around 8lb, but since the record was a feeble 5lb, that was beaten instantly. In the end, Phil came out on top once more, with the only double-figure tope to be landed, at 10lb 12oz.

In the end we had six and lost two more, one of which Simon had coaxed all the way to the back of the boat, only to see it throw the hook at the last minute. Shame. It looked to be closer to 20lb than 15lb and would have easily beaten Phil's record, but sadly all that marks it now is a memory of the gales of laughter that spilled sympathetically from Simon's crewmates.

After that, there was only the traditional "Eating of the curry" ceremony and more drinking to be done. Once again Paul shone in every department, this time staying up till almost ten o'clock before crawling off to snuggle into his fur-lined pyjamas and heated sleeping bag.

Something fishy this way comes
The trip might have been over, but its legacy lived on for many weeks. Or it did in certain quarters. The word 'legacy' in this context referring to a bag of saveloys which lived on in the back seat arm well of Stevie's Jag for at least six weeks. They'd been left there by, you've guessed it, the old reprobate himself - Paul Myles, probably in a drunken stupor after a couple of bottles of whisky too many.

The only reason Stevie noticed them is because people had begun to compliment him on the improvement in the odour of his car. He now has a special bag of 'liquid saveloy' fitted in the glove compartment, and is thinking of installing one in his house.

On the other hand, if he wanted to pep up the aroma in his living quarters, he could always follow the Philip Boxall approach to hygiene. It seems that Liz had noticed an exotic additional whiff in the air of their home and, after much hunting, managed to track it down to Phil's tackle.

Nothing unusual in Phil having pongy tackle, I hear you protest, but you'd have to agree that it only rarely stinks of ancient rotting yuck. In this case, the culprit was a bucket of rubby dubby that Phil had forgotten to dispose of. The upshot of this is that Phil's fishing gear has been banished to the shed, which is entirely fair enough. But I now earnestly appeal to Liz (whom I know reads this newsletter) to let Phil back into the house. It gets cold in the shed at night.